Here Comes the Bride, Part Three: Round Eyes and the “Middle” Brides
Sometime in the very late 1970's, the face of the original Corpse Bride at Disneyland was repainted. WDW soon followed suit. This was the new look:
The face of the WDW Corpse Bride never had as much painted detail as the DL version, especially in the lower part of the face, so the transition to this model was less dramatic a change.
When the blank-faced, round-eyed bride finally debuted, it was obviously a throwback to some earlier Marc Davis concepts (see Part One). The Disneyland story is slightly different from the Orlando story, so we'll tell them one at a time. That one at the top of this post is an early Disneyland photo. Two round, glowing eyes in a darkened face. Hey, how about a "magic eye" 3-D image? Get used to these, folks; I've got a million of 'em. Use the practice thingy over there on the right and maybe you can get the hang of it if you can't already do it. At worst, you get two images for the price of one, so what is there to complain about? From 1990:
For many, including your blog administrator, this is still the classic bride. She's scary precisely because she is ambiguous. Is she evil and threatening? Or is she forlorn and tragic? Is she gonna get you or is she going to plead with you for help? The candle suggests a searching figure, which in turn suggests victimhood. Bad guys don't search around with candles; they LIKE it dark (see John 3:20). But I dunno, Beating Heart still gives you the creeps. Indeed, she's the number one suspect in the murder of the Hat Box Ghost, but since he's gone, she's what the FBI calls a "person of interest." Some time in the early 90's, the Imagineers decided to beef up the attic scene (unnecessarily, in my book). They gave the bride a visible face, put in a phantom piano player plunking out a distorted wedding march, and re-dressed the pop-up ghosts as groomsmen, each of them shouting "I do" in a mocking sort of way. That "middle bride" version of BH debuted in September of 1995. This widely-reproduced photograph makes her look kind of sweet.
Maybe too sweet. Here's another shot in which she looks a little tougher:
In some photos this version approaches something akin to creepy. Notice how similar we are to the Marc Davis sketch showing a darkened upper face on the candle bearer.
But it remains true that she looks more forlorn than threatening, especially with those mean old goblin groomsmen all around her, mocking her. Sometime around 2000, it seems the Imagineers wanted to bring back a little more of the ambiguity that made Ol' Round Eyes scary (or at least scarier), so they made BH's eyes more like the blank old ones, and they put her veil down in front of her face. The results were impressive. These shots by professional photogs make it easy to compare "middle bride 1" with "middle bride 2." Definitely creepier, but still not as creepy as Ol' Round Eyes, IMO.
In 2006 they overhauled the attic yet again, replacing Beating Heart and the pop-up groomsmen with Constance and her grisly wedding portraits. The ambiguity is all gone; she's threatening and definitely not forlorn; plus she's something that no other version of the attic bride has ever been: comic. So now we have an absolute split between the melodramatically forlorn bride of Phantom Manor in Paris and the gleefully homicidal wacko of the stateside parks. (Tokyo retains an ambiguous form of the middle bride.) People definitely tend to take sides over Constance. You like her or you don't. Me, I dislike having a fairly full-blown story-line foisted on me, excluding me from the imaginative process and making me a spectator only. That gets boring. And that's without even considering how well the character fits into its context (meh) or how well the effect is executed (meh).
I would vote to bring back Beating Heart in a heartbeat.
The story down in Orlando is similar. The Corpse Bride probably disappeared in the very late 70's or mid-80's. Here's the WDW version of Round Eyes in 1989 and in 1990. They liked to play around with her veil down there in Orlando, a little more than than they did at Anaheim, it would seem. My theory is that she needed mosquito netting, this being Florida and all:
This widely-reproduced pic is undated, but she looks a lot like the '89 model above, except veiled.
Despite how she may look in those photos, when the lights were out she was still, basically, Ol' Round Eyes, as this 1995 photo shows:
Orlando went to a "middle bride" with a fully-visible face about the same time as Anaheim. The main difference was the hair, which was pretty crazy at WDW. They were forever fine-tuning her face, but a lot of people never liked this version ("the smurf bride") and preferred the spookier DL middle bride.
(pix by Allen Huffmann and Mick2005)
"Smurf bride" might be a little harsh. In some photos she looks pretty darn good:
But just as was the case at DL, the middle bride doesn't look so much threatening as forlorn (yes, I realize I'm overusing that word). Still, WDW never got as melodramatic as DL did, since Florida was spared the mocking groomsmen shouting "I do." Never got those. Before we say good-bye to Beating Heart and hello to Connie, here are two handy murals of the bride down through the years.
At Disneyland, the Corpse Bride version of Beating Heart was the original, lasting from Aug 1969 until the late 70's. The round-eyed, dark-faced Beating Heart replaced her and lasted until 1995. Then it's the first "middle bride" (Sept 1995—ca. 2000), the second "middle bride" (ca. 2000—May 2006), and Constance (May 2006—now).
At WDW, we started out with the Corpse Bride (Oct 71—sometime in the late 70's, early 80's), followed by Ol' Round Eyes. They went to a "middle bride" about the same time DL did (ca. 1995). WDW continued to fiddle around with her over the years, but not as radically as DL did, and so I lump all the brides in the Orlando attic from 1995 to 2007 into one "middle bride" category. Constance debuted in the fall of 2007.
Originally Posted: Friday, May 21, 2010 Original Link: [x]